The team at NADS has also developed this miniSim, which runs the same software as the big NADS-1 rig, and the same virtual environment, allowing research groups to test their ideas on a smaller scale but with the ability to bring them to NADS easily. So far, it's sold more than 70 miniSims. You'll notice this one is running a Tesla UI on its main instrument display and infotainment screen.

Jonathan Gitlin

However, it's also sending that data to these screens, which are showing a Toyota instrument panel as well as another Tesla infotainment screen. There was a third screen showing a Volvo instrument panel, all three of which were synced in real time to the rig.

Jonathan Gitlin

Toyota flew me to Cedar Rapids and provided a night in a hotel for this story.

To most people, the words "driving simulator" probably conjure up thoughts of video games. That's understandable: franchises like Gran Turismo and Forza have sold in the tens of millions. While the fidelity of even those games is little short of amazing, at the end of the day, they're games first and foremost. But there are other good reasons to simulate driving, whether that's to study distracted or impaired driving or to better engineer a race car. As you might imagine, these simulators are a little bit more specialized than a games console and a steering wheel—and a good deal more expensive, too. What you may not imagine is that one of the most advanced driving simulators in the world, not to mention one of the largest and most expensive, can be found in Coralville, Iowa.

It's called the National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS). Actually, the facility—one of our national labs and managed by the University of Iowa—is called NADS; the really expensive driving sim is called NADS-1, and it's a sight to see. In fact, until Toyota built a new simulator in Japan in 2007, it was the most advanced driving sim on the planet, and it still has the second-largest motion envelope of any driving simulator that currently exists. (There's also a NADS-2, which isn't quite as advanced because it doesn't move.)

NADS-1 lives in a hanger-like chamber, smaller than a football field, bigger than a basketball court, and looks similar to the very high-end flight simulators you might find at Boeing or Airbus. There's the dome—a white capsule large enough to fit a full-size car or even the top two-thirds of a class 8 truck—around which is displayed a 360-degree virtual environment. The dome is mounted atop six hydraulic legs, which let it pitch forward and back and roll from side to side. The legs are mounted upon a rotating ring, which lets the entire unit yaw from side to side, and the whole arrangement is fixed to an X-Y platform that lets it move within the room, to better simulate a vehicle accelerating and braking.

Even so, NADS-1 has some limitations. "The space that we have in the bay out there is not enough room to do 1:1 motion for a braking maneuver from high speed to a stop, so we still have to scale our motion," explained Chris Schwarz, director of engineering and modeling research at NADS. "But we can play some tricks with emotion. Like if you're braking, then we can translate you in the room, which is how you experienced braking in the car. But if we run out of space in the simulator, which we most likely will, then we can transition some of that deceleration cue into tilt and let gravity take over that cue. And while it's doing that, then we can take the dome and slowly pull it back to the center of the room to prepare for what's next, which is likely an acceleration from start to back up to speed," Schwarz told me.

During our visit, the dome was set up with a full-size car mounted on four more actuators that are there to simulate the bumps and vibrations you'd expect when driving over different road surfaces. Above it, 16 LED projectors each throw a 1920x1200 slice of the simulated environment onto the walls of the dome. The virtual environment is called Springfield for the same reason Matt Groening chose it for The Simpsons, and it's a 285-square mile (738km2) digital proving ground that includes a mix of urban and suburban streets, rural highways, and divided-lane interstate highways. (It also contains some familiar-looking buildings if you know Iowa City and Coralville.)

"The main theme is to make sure of the driver's readiness in level 3 automation. [This is when the car is fully responsible for driving and situational awareness, but the human driver must be ready to resume control when asked.] So we're interested in assessing the driver's cognitive and physical capabilities when you are giving them a takeover request, because in level 3 automation drivers can be, you know, out of the loop, doing many other things," said Pujitha Gunaratne, a researcher at Toyota's Collaborative Safety Research Center who is working with NADS.

Since the point is to study driver behavior, the interior of the Camry was dotted with a number of cameras to observe the driver from multiple angles, plus infrared LEDs to provide illumination and a decidedly non-standard heads-up display. Both this HUD and the digital display between the car's analogue dials were configured to show feedback on which automation state the car was in. Rather than just explain to me what the research involved, Schwarz, Gunaratne, and their colleagues kindly let me have a go, running me through an abbreviated set of tests.

After getting comfortable and up to cruising speed on the highway, I was asked to engage the car's level 3 automation, then busy myself answering a number of multiple-choice quizzes on a tablet. (The science questions were fiendishly difficult, and many involved recognizing 18th-century portraits to determine which long-dead white man gave his name to some physical property or other. I felt quite demoralized with how low my score was.) At various points, an event would occur requiring my attention on the road—a suddenly stopped vehicle in my path, for example, or a temporary lane closure—sometimes while I was driving, sometimes while I was distracting myself with the tablet. How slowly or quickly I responded, as well as all my control inputs into the car, were all cataloged by the array of cameras and sensors, which would have been added to the study's dataset had I been a real research participant.

They have real cars, too

"We want to try to understand the space of what drivers are going to be doing in these higher levels of automation and what impact those different types of tasks have [regarding] engagement with the driving tasks. So this interplay between the cognitive demand of a task, how much it pulls your mind away from driving, and the physical demands, how much pulls your parts of your body away from dragging," said John Gaspar, director of human factors research at NADS. The precise nature of distraction is an active area of investigation these days, with at least one recent study suggesting that it's all to do with where your eyes are, although much more research shows how poor we humans are at multitasking.

To that end, NADS has a number of instrumented test vehicles which can do some on-road confirmation of simulator findings. In this case, I visited a decommissioned stretch of nearby runway, about a third of a mile (500m) long. As with the driving sim, I got to play guinea pig behind the wheel of a white Tesla Model S, with instructions to follow a chase car with the car's adaptive cruise control and lane keeping engaged. (The runway had been marked up with lane markers to be legible to the car's lane-keeping camera sensors.) Each time, I was given a different task to perform while cruising behind the chase car—searching for NADS' homepage on the Tesla's infotainment screen, composing an email on my phone, and counting loose change from the cupholder. At some point, the chase car would brake or change lanes to reveal a lane closure, requiring me to react.

I knew there was going to be an event requiring my attention before too long, given the relatively short length of the runway, which means I didn't devote all my attention to the distracting task at hand. And I knew that there was little danger, what with the lack of any oncoming traffic or highway infrastructure with which to collide at speed. Even then, I still ended up having to brake harder and with less margin between me and the car ahead than I'd be comfortable with in the real world. Given that the problem of distracted driving continues to get worse, it evidently does bear saying: don't do any of those things if you're also simultaneously in the driver's seat of a moving automobile, even if you do have a full suite of advanced driver-assistance systems!

It's like lighting a cigarette with a SpaceX rocket. (Please don't read this Elon and actually do it.)

It doesn't work if you want to realistically test how various distractions and other human factors affect a driver's ability to handle the task of driving at highway speeds without putting them in mortal danger.

So the sim itself is called NADS-1, does that perhaps indicate that they're working on a NADS-2?

2nd paragraph:

Quote:

There's also a NADS-2, which isn't quite as advanced because it doesn't move.

You need both kinds for this type of research. Cheaper, simpler static ones to develop the experiments, software, procedures, etc. and the big full-motion one to acquire good data and match your research as closely as possible to real-world conditions without actually crashing cars.

Are driving simulators not that common in the US? In finland almost all driving schools offer at least some of the lessons to be driven with a simulator.

This is in a whole other lane, figuratively speaking.

This is a full motion simulation that is clearly on a par with military flight sims. It's far more advanced than what 16 year old students use to learn accident avoidance and to "remember to check your rear view before changing lanes."

This is a full motion simulation that is clearly on a par with military flight sims. It's far more advanced than what 16 year old students use to learn accident avoidance and to "remember to check your rear view before changing lanes."

I know that, but the tone in the article and in the comments made it seem that everyone only knows the “games” as driving sims, not the actual simulators used in teaching.

People in the USA are not really taught to drive at all. The driving test in France in the late 80's was a series of classes that took more than an hour each and several in person driving lessons. There was a strict test afterwards both driving and written.

In the USA in the early 90's, driving school was something you paid for if you wanted, it was not required. You go to the DMV do a short multiple question exam, then get in car with inspector, drive around for 20 minutes at most and then parallel park once (in some states. not all). Then you get a "learner's permit" for 6 months with a few driving restrictions that most people ignore completely. Then you get your full license. There is no classroom training required or in person driving lessons required. Your parents teach you in whatever way they feel best. As a result, most people in the USA are pretty terrible drivers that do not understand right of way rules. Roundabouts and 4 way stops are major points of confusion.

People in the USA are not really taught to drive at all. The driving test in France in the late 80's was a series of classes that took more than an hour each and several in person driving lessons. There was a strict test afterwards both driving and written.

In the USA in the early 90's, driving school was something you paid for if you wanted, it was not required. You go to the DMV do a short multiple question exam, then get in car with inspector, drive around for 20 minutes at most and then parallel park once (in some states. not all). Then you get a "learner's permit" for 6 months with a few driving restrictions that most people ignore completely. Then you get your full license. There is no classroom training required or in person driving lessons required. Your parents teach you in whatever way they feel best. As a result, most people in the USA are pretty terrible drivers that do not understand right of way rules. Roundabouts and 4 way stops are major points of confusion.

Same with Canada (at least BC).

At 16, you can go into the DMV and fill out a multiple choice questionnaire. Pass that, you get your Learner's License and a big red L sticker for your car.

For the next 6 months or so (not really sure, I got my license before all the graduated nonsense started), you can drive so long as someone with a full license is in the car, you have no other passengers, and you stay off the highway. I believe you have to have proof of 30 hours of driving or something like that.

Then you go back to the DMV for a road test. Pass that, you get your Novice License, and a big green N sticker for your car. For the next 18 months, you can drive as long as there's only 1 or 2 passengers, it's not at night, and there's someone with a full license in the car for highways. Or some such nonsense.

Then you go back to the DMV again. Not sure if there's another road test. At this point, you get your full Driver's License.

There's no requirement for any actual classes, courses, or anything. You just have to be able to pass a couple written and driving tests. Anyone with a full driver's license can "teach" you how to operate a vehicle, regardless of what their actual driving skills/knowledge are.

Personally, (back in the 90s) I went through a full-fledged driving course (Young Drivers of Canada) that included a driving simulator, 16+ hours of classroom work, and over 30 hours of in-car lessons across all kinds of roads, including in the snow. There was even a defensive driving portion to it. It was great, and had no issues getting my license (just straight from learner's to full, no graduated crap).

I taught my girlfriend (now wife) how to drive a couple years later, and she failed her first road test as I didn't teach her to downshift when going downhill and her speed crept over the limit before she started to brake, which is an automatic fail. Hee hee oops!

Okay, I don't grok the "13 degrees of freedom" comment in one of the picture captions.

For any moving vehicle in 4 dimensions, you have 4 components to that motion: velocity, roll, pitch, and yaw. Everything else should be some combination of those four components. Where does 13 come from?

Okay, I don't grok the "13 degrees of freedom" comment in one of the picture captions....Where does 13 come from?

It’s likely a misinterpretation of something. The motion base upon which the cab sits is a six degree of freedom (DOF) platform—three rotational DOFs (pitch, roll, yaw), plus three translational DOFs (left/right, fwd/back, up/down). And since the base sits on a moving platform there would be two additional DOFs, bringing the total to eight by my count.

It's like lighting a cigarette with a SpaceX rocket. (Please don't read this Elon and actually do it.)

It doesn't work if you want to realistically test how various distractions and other human factors affect a driver's ability to handle the task of driving at highway speeds without putting them in mortal danger.

My thought was it beat the living hell out of having to pay for fender work and new cars (not to mention drivers). Given the emulation of multiple other vehicle types and the different size of "models" they have of the simulator itself, I can see an $80 million price tag on that. Researching all of that from a POV perspective in real-world simulations ain't as cheap as people might think.

So they have a multi-million state of the art mechanical driving simulator and could only spare $20 bucks to shell of a Driver graphics simulator? At least they could have gone fancy and bought a $30 GTAIII.

The maximum DoF for a rigid body is 6. That's the articulated arms of the platform.

There's also the lateral and forward translation of the base of the platform. 2DoF.

Then, they likely have a suspension simulator for the vehicle. You could say up/down for each suspension which represents 3DoF (vertical, roll, pitch). Total 13DoF (edit: actually 11)

Well, you could add 6 more virtual DoF by manipulating the projection. And would be possible to rotate the platform (edit: they actually do this, 12DoF) giving one more redundant DoF (yaw), this could be motion unlimited compared to the arms which are limited.

edit: It seems they manipulate the projection to create a virtual Yaw. 13ishDoF.

People in the USA are not really taught to drive at all. The driving test in France in the late 80's was a series of classes that took more than an hour each and several in person driving lessons. There was a strict test afterwards both driving and written.

In the USA in the early 90's, driving school was something you paid for if you wanted, it was not required. You go to the DMV do a short multiple question exam, then get in car with inspector, drive around for 20 minutes at most and then parallel park once (in some states. not all). Then you get a "learner's permit" for 6 months with a few driving restrictions that most people ignore completely. Then you get your full license. There is no classroom training required or in person driving lessons required. Your parents teach you in whatever way they feel best. As a result, most people in the USA are pretty terrible drivers that do not understand right of way rules. Roundabouts and 4 way stops are major points of confusion.

Same with Canada (at least BC).

At 16, you can go into the DMV and fill out a multiple choice questionnaire. Pass that, you get your Learner's License and a big red L sticker for your car.

Shoot, in Iowa you don’t even need to be 16. When I was 14 I took driver’s ed through my high school, it was something like 2 months maybe, then once I turned 15 my parents got me a car and I was able to get my “to-school permit.” Basically a permit that let you drive by yourself “to school or school activities” though everyone who had one obviously didn’t actually follow that. I have no idea if they still allow that, but I’m sure they still do.